On national deficit, Bush left Obama holding the bag

Brendan Smialowski/Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama listens as President George W. Bush (L) speaks during a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House.

By John Hrebin
Cranford

In a July 23 letter, “Founders Foresight,” the writer states that Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison “were cautious and concerned about creating a national debt.” It is unfortunate that President George W. Bush did not take their advice. Bush inherited a $150 billion surplus from President Bill Clinton. The balance sheet in 2001 was so good that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, at his first meeting with the new Senate Budget Committee, expressed concerns about paying the national debt off too fast.

He need not have worried. With massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, two wars and Medicare Part D all paid for, not by budget offsets or raising taxes but by raising the national debt, Bush was not concerned. After all, under Republican administrations like his, deficits didn’t matter. The real upside to all this was he could always leave the next president — in this case, Democrat Barack Obama — holding the trillion-dollar deficit bag.